order to be the support of his mother and his
sisters.

"A man can do much when he wishes to do much: join your efforts to my
prayers, and leave the rest in the hands of God."

The prediction of this Puritan woman was fulfilled: a little time
afterwards rector Salfranck was appointed professor at Richembourg,
whither Sand followed him; it was there that the events of 1813 found
him. In the month of March he wrote to his mother:--

"I can scarcely, dear mother, express to you how calm and happy I begin
to feel since I am permitted to believe in the enfranchisement of my
country, of which I hear on every side as being so near at hand,--of that
country which, in my faith in God, I see beforehand free and mighty, that
country for whose happiness I would undergo the greatest sufferings, and
even death. Take strength for this crisis. If by chance it should reach
our good province, lift your eyes to the Almighty, then carry them back
to beautiful rich nature. The goodness of God which preserved and
protected so many men during the disastrous Thirty Years' War can do and
will do now what it could and did then. As for me, I believe and hope."

Leipzig came to justify Sand's presentiments; then the year 1814 arrived,
and he thought Germany free.

On the 10th of December in the same year he left Richembourg with this
certificate from his master:--

"Karl Sand belongs to the small number of those elect young men who are
distinguished at once by the gifts of the mind and the faculties of the
soul; in application and work he surpasses all his fellow-students, and
this fact explains his rapid progress in all the philosophical and
philological sciences; in mathematics only there are still some further
studies which he might pursue. The most affectionate wishes of his
teacher follow him on his departure.

"J. A. KEYN, "Rector, and master of the first class. "Richembourg, Sept.
15, 1814"

But it was really the parents of Sand, and in particular his mother, who
had prepared the fertile soil in which his teachers had sowed the seeds
of learning; Sand knew this well, for at the moment of setting out for
the university of Tubingen, where he was about to complete the
theological studies necessary for becoming a pastor, as he desired to do,
he wrote to them:--

"I confess that, like all my brothers and sisters, I owe to you that
beautiful and great part of my education which I have seen to be lacking
to most of those around me.